Wednesday, September 26, 2012

My aunt and uncle brought their Pomeranian to visit once. My parents' 20-year-old Siamese was all "WTF! I haven't lived in this house for 20 years to put up with a dog now!!!" And jumped the dog. The dog spent the rest of the visit in terror, and Coco was probably satisfied that he was the reason the dog eventually left.

α: It’s time to get creative in fixing the shuttles. A talented engineer uses what he has on hand and finds new and innovative ways to fix things.
Your Mission: Jury-rig something: change the details of an existing pattern (e.g. adding a border, an element that wasn’t there), combine two patterns (e.g. putting an intarsia or fair isle pattern onto a hat pattern you like) or design something from scratch.

This mission is based on a modification to a design I had improvised previously, but I had not been completely happy with the result, so I had left it aside, planning to re-work it at some point. That was over 2 years ago. Given our current dire situation, now was the perfect time to finish this feat of genetic engineering and turn this creation into a useful sub-aquatic exploration tool. Therefore, I finished the re-design, and I am much happier with the results now, which should help us find food and perhaps useful minerals in this planet’s bodies of water.

Behold, the Lemon Shark, Mark II:
Here is the Lemon Shark, Mark I, side by side with its replacement. (Mark I is the darker yellow on the left-hand side.)I am much happier with the mouth in particular on the 2nd iteration. And with the larger mouth, Lemon Shark Mark II should be able to grab larger samples from the oceanic floor. I will be writing this up as a free pattern with design schematics and posting it in the next few days to submit for my Science Gamma mission so that other stranded crews can also benefit from it.

β: Being out here means that we have limited supplies, and we have to be smart about the things we do have to work with in making repairs to the shuttles and later helping in breaking through the force field.

Your Mission: Craft something using reused or recycled supplies. Use anything that is unusual or that you don’t use very often. Ideas include garbage bags cut up into yarn-like stripes (plarn), strips of leather, nylon loops (used to make potholders), etc. (Reclaimed/frogged yarn does NOT count as most of us use yarn on a regular basis.)

As we have many tasks and are very busy trying to figure out how to escape from this planet while also working on basic survival, I thought an extra pair of hands might help. Using parts recycled from this obsolete communications device:
and wire removed from what was called a "personal computer" from the end of the 20th century which has been awaiting a trip to the electronics recycling center (apparently for a few centuries now), I created this cybernetic mini-me.
Note that, despite its small size, it makes an excellent guard against any hostile indigenous creatures we may encounter, as the eyes also have phaser circuits, as demonstrated in the following holo-video:

γ: We need to figure out how to break through that force field. Our scientists have been studying it and have made plans on how we’re getting out of here.

Connect with someone who has written out a pattern for the Science Gamma mission and test it for them. Please link the post from Science where the design was turned in.